is a blog about design, technology and culture written by Khoi Vinh, and has been more or less continuously published since December 2000 in New York City. Khoi is currently Principal Designer at Adobe. Previously, Khoi was co-founder and CEO of Mixel (acquired in 2013), Design Director of The New York Times Online, and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. He is the author of “How They Got There: Interviews with Digital Designers About Their Careers”and “Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design,” and was named one of Fast Company’s “fifty most influential designers in America.” Khoi lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
Here was my first reaction to Apple’s announcement that they are now officially enabling, if not supporting, the ability to boot Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system on their new, Intel-based hardware through a software utility they call Boot Camp: “Holy shit!”
This is a momentous move for Apple, something representing a real break from the nagging case of N.I.H. syndrome that’s dogged the company like a lingering cough for years and years. The world outside of Apple’s many legions of overboard devotees seems to think so, too: this afternoon, the Boot Camp story made it into the prized top-left slot on our home page at NYTimes.com (I swear that I have no influence over such decisions), and when the market closed today, AAPL was up by over six dollars.
My second reaction was to email a friend who actually works inside the Apple Computer ‘mothership’ in Cupertino, CA, and ask him how he could ever keep a secret like Boot Camp — indeed how he manages to keep all of Apple’s juicy, expletive-inspiring product secrets — to himself. His response was, “Every day is a trial, man. Every day.” He’s twice the man I would be in that situation, to say the least.
On Closer Inspection
On a third pass, a bit more sobriety nibbled away at my excitement. While I’m ecstatic about the idea of essentially getting two computers for the price of one with my next Macintosh purchase, I think dual booting is short of the ideal that I had in mind. Boot Camp does nothing to mitigate the fact that dual booting is incredibly inconvenient, that a user must first make a modal shift in hardware to move from one operating system to the other.
Through the lens of time and productivity, this is a costly decision-making process, and I can’t imagine swapping back and forth between Windows and Mac OS X more than once or twice a day. For the many users like myself who often need to work on two different platforms at once, it’s still not an ideal solution, nor does it truly mitigate the need to actually have two physical, separate computers on our desks.
When Apple moved to Intel processors, my original hope was for native support for Windows applications inside the Mac OS itself. This means launching programs written expressly for the Windows operating system alongside those written expressly for the Mac OS — getting the applications without the overhead of the frankly unwanted operating system, essentially.
This has been the focus of the open source WINE project, which seeks to give us the world of Windows software without Windows. There’s a Macintosh-specific version of WINE called Darwine, and it has been making steady progress. I still hold out a lot of hope for its eventual maturity, but it’s still a long way off.
Boot Camp, though it’s being released today only in public beta form, is here and now, and it presumably has the more or less full commercial (if not technical) support of Apple Computer itself, which makes it dramatically more viable than Darwine. Still, it strikes me as reaching for only low-hanging fruit: making Windows available from a dual-boot prompt on Intel hardware is only minimally impressive from a technology standpoint. Don’t we expect more from Apple, a company that is practically synonymous with systems innovation?
Booted Predecessor to Boot Camp
The Boot Camp announcement reminded me of the past ’daily trials’ that Apple engineers have endured while building spectacularly unexpected products. Digging back into Paul Kunkel’s gorgeous 1997 book, “Apple Design: The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group,” I re-read the passages on the “Jonathan” concept computers built at Apple in the mid-Eighties and designed by John Fitch:
“The idea came to [Fitch] in September 1984. ‘For weeks I had been thinking about a small computer that users could put in their living room and slowly build into a full-blown machine as their needs increased,’ said Fitch. ‘But rather than do a standard motherboard configuration, I designed a backplane that contained the power supply and a few ROM chips in the base… I/O connectors on the back, and a track on top that connected directly to the bus (the backbone of the computer, which functions as a high-speed data highway).’
“Fitch’s concept called for the backplane and track to support book-shaped modules, each containing circuit boards and chips for running the Mac OS, Apple II software, DOS, Windows or Unix operating systems, plus other modules for connecting disk drives, modems and networking hardware all plugged into the same track. Since the backplane was horizontal, and the modules were small and slender, Fitch imagined the system as a book on a shelf. ‘A basic system would have a short shelf with one or two books. A business setup would have three or four books. And a power system would have seven or eight books on a wider shelf.’”
The Jonathan concept would have made the Macintosh the centerpiece of a hardware system that would run virtually any operating system natively. And while nothing I read about it explicitly addressed the issue of easily swapping back and forth between multiple OS’s, it’s still a fundamentally more radical approach to increasing hardware value through software availability than is Boot Camp.
Moreover, Jonathan was first presented to Apple executives in June 1985 — twenty-one years ago. Apple’s CEO at the time, the notoriously short-sighted John Sculley, nixed the project, “…voicing the fear that once the Mac and DOS were offered on the same platform, more Mac users might move to DOS than DOS users would move to the Mac. ‘That reasoning floored us,’ says Fitch. ‘Apparently, Sculley had less faith in the Mac than we did.’”
It’s true that Apple has been rescued from that narrow thinking since Steve Jobs’ return to the helm. And it does seem that, this time out, there’s a genuine belief that Windows is unlikely to sap users away from the Mac platform. As analysts have pointed out today, Boot Camp could be a “game changer,” creating the potential for a new influx of users leaving Windows for the Macintosh.
But in spite of all the innovation Apple brings to the table in so many arenas, the company seems to remain skittish about allowing its customers access to any other operating system than its own. Boot Camp is huge news from a business angle, and it’s going to be a delight to many customers — including me, probably. But that’s only because Apple has set the bar so low in terms of what we’ve come to expect from the company when allowing us to mingle freely outside of the Mac OS X garden. As it stands, Boot Camp is disappointingly short on innovation, especially in contrast to Jonathan; I hope it’s just the first step towards an OS strategy that completely upends the way we think about how multiple operating systems can work together.
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31 Comments
thomas
Yeah, but I bet “Boot Camp” is just a framework that will eventually allow virtualization in Leopard. Either via Apple, or Microsoft in the form of Virtual PC, Boot Camp’s technology seems destined to allow side-by-side use.
Having migrated from Windows, I have an old PC to test websites on. Therefore, I don’t need Boot Camp myself (at least, not right now). However, from an investor’s point of view, Boot Camp seems to me to be a really good move.
It seems to me that people will migrate to Apple hardware first, and then install Windows. Naturally, they’ll mess around with Mac OS, and I believe that many people who actually use OS on a familiar computer will like it much more than Windows.
While Apple may not significantly increase software sales right off the bat, I think there will be an increase in hardware sales. I know plenty of people who would love to have Apple hardware, but don’t want to “learn” OS X give up their games.
The interesting part of BootCamp to me is the artwork. If you look at past pieces of software artwork, be it logos or boxes or posters or tv ads, the artwork of new products, especially un-rumormongered beta products, you see the shape of things to come. Think of the black and lickable supreme light table look of Aperture, and then take a peek in the full-screen editing of iPhoto. Look at the artwork of the box of iLife and the possibilities of the software come alive. You look at this Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come grey logo of windows, and I wonder at the daring statement of “yeah, we can hold this old thing for you… for now” and you have to wonder if, in the future, especially as they keep stating “BootCamp will be part of Leopard” that the system will start with Mac OS X regardless, and should you need windows, it will start, run and function at full speed, with fast-user switching doubling as fast-system-swapping. Because right now, Bootcamp intitializes before OS X, or so it appears.
But again, they keep saying it will be “built-in to Leopard” which is something else again.
I agree that dual-boot capability is still a pain in the butt. Personally, I’d be very happy with a Windows/OS X “fast user switching” setup, but I guess we’ll have to wait to see if that’s feasible.
Brian
Normally, I’d agree that dual-booting is less than ideal. But if you could run Mac apps alongside Windows apps, you’d have to have Mac OS and Windows both running concurrently along with all your software. Do you really want that kinda *cough*bloat*cough* overhead?
Brian: Well, that’s what I’m talking about — WINE reduces the overhead (in theory) and allows you to run Windows applications without Windows. Remember when I said that? That’s what I meant.
My prediction – Apple will *never* offer virtualization, at least not in the near (1-2 year) future. There’s a lot of good reasons for this:
1. The modal shift is required. It forces the user to change their expectations – this looks like Windows, and acts like Windows, so if something blows up, it’s Window’s fault and not the Mac. Being able to just double-click on an exe doesn’t really provide that shift (even if the UI inside of the window suddenly looks like pants).
2. While I don’t think dual-booting has any real potential of killing off native application development for Mac OS X (which seems to be one of the more common paranoid reactions to Boot Camp that I’ve seen), virtualization most definitely is. If a developer knows for certain that every Mac that runs Leopard (or whatever) supports virtualization out of the box, there’s less incentive to spend the development time and money to build a true, native version port of a Windows-only application.
Not all companies would follow this route, but enough would that I think it would become a serious issue for OS X in the long term.
3. Apple has a long and storied history of plucking the low-hanging fruit and leaving the more complex implementations to 3rd party developers (cf. Safari RSS, the Finder, etc.). If some other company rolls out virtualization, not only does it save Apple the effort of developing it themselves, it also alleviates both of the above issues by virtue of not being an Apple product.
I’m not saying that being able to launch Windows IE 6 to quickly test a site and then quit out of it wouldn’t be dandy, but I highly doubt Apple would go much further than what they’re already providing with Boot Camp.
I’m no developer but it seems to me that because an app (from either platform) is so very dependent upon the the operating system itself and not written in something that is inherently cross-platform (like Java), you would need a Hybrid OS that is built from the ground up to support both windows and mac APIs or frameworks.
And you can be darn sure I’m not tainting my OS with windows.
The real game changer would be “dual run” NOT “dual boot.
As Khoi has pointed out, it’s just too much overhead.
Neil – valid points, but as Will Shipley has pointed out, several developers continue to make Apple software for simple reasons:
– Mac users USE their computers, not tolerate them
– Mac users pay for software
– Mac users like having the latest and greatest, so they upgrade and pay for upgrades
Also, at an OS level, Mac apps can have features that Windows apps simply can’t because of the underpinnings of the two separate systems.
But it is interesting to think about whether the big guns – Adobe and Microsoft – would continue to make Mac versions if virtualisation was supported in Leopard.
KillBill
The fastest way to run Adobe apps as of yesterday… boot into MS Windows… now that is a scary thought, just as Hrush raised he specter, I really wonder how Adobe looks at this?
Looks like there’s already a better solution than BootCamp. Parallels, a Russian competitor to VMWare, uses Intel’s Vanderpool to allow running guest operating systems “inside” your native OS. They’ve just released a public beta for Intel Macs, which supports Windows XP and Linux.
Now I really can’t wait until the Intel pro-Macs come out. I want to replace my PowerMac!
Paul Allen
You heard it here. When Apple has migrated all of their major vendors to XCode, Cocoa for Windows will make a re-apperarance. This will enable the developers to truly offer the same software for both Macs and Windows – using Apple’s tools. Why wouldn’t a developer jump at a chance like that?
There is some talk of creating a series of APIs to allow OSX universal binaries to run on windows. Best of both worlds, on Apple’s terms.
I’m about to grab a MBP, for me being able to run XP has one sole advantage – games. Being able to play CS2 and the like when I need a break is going to be enjoyable.
Agreed. Without clipboard sharing, or rapid browser switching, it won’t be much of a productivity boost (for me).
I think the biggest impact of this won’t be for me though, it will for for the likes of Dell.
LS
If Apple proceeds in this arena the same way they have in the past I would expect that ‘Boot Camp’ is just a prelude to what is ahead. Much in the same way that iPod Photo gave way to iPod (hey now they’re all color screen versions) which gave way to iPod (hey now I can watch video clips) which will probably give way to iPod AV (or hey now the screen is way bigger). It just seems to me that Apple has this thing for rolling out innovations in a measured way. They start with the small yet exciting innovation, even though they could have just gone to the bleeding edge right away. So my guess is that we will see virtualization in 10.5. They just wanted to get their feet wet and see how everyone was going to react. But hey if it’s the bleeding edge you’re looking for you might find it at http://www.parallels.com/en/mac
Scott M.
Psychologically I wonder what impact a Leopard w/Boot Camp Macintosh will have on some of those ipod-halo-effect potential switchers. It might just be the safety blanket they need to take the plunge and get a Mac. They can still boot into Windows and use old software etc.
Dare I say it’s similar to that initial move from OS 9/Classic to OS X. I could still boot Classic and run Adobe Dimensions if I needed to — until Illustrator CS for OS X incorporated that functionality. Eventually I never needed to run Classic…
I think this is an intermediary step; the end goal might be to make OSX portable to PC. (My rough outline here.) They’re not that far off now, and the ability to switch any computer from Windows to OSX would open Apple up to many more markets than ever before.
Roshambo
In a similar vein of WINE and DARWINE, you may want to take a look at Q; an open source and very mature processor emulator along the lines of VirtualPC. Really good for the web developer using OS X that needs to test stuff out on a Windows machine. In this case, it’s much more practical than rebooting and switching operating systems.
The response this announcement has received from people in the PC world is the most important aspect — without exception, every PC-using professional I know (whether designer, programmer, or systems admin) has said right away that now they will buy a Mac.
I think Apple is playing directly to that crowd here, and not to existing (and loyal) Mac users, and it’s a smart move. Plus, simply rebooting to play a few high-framerate FPS games in XP will be nice for Mac gamers 😉
I’d still like to see Microsoft release a version of VirtualPC that hooks directly into the Intel processor, skipping the whole emulation game, but I’m not holding my breath…
Here at the HS I work at we could buy 300 macs and let the user pick which os they want use. No more 120 dells, 110 macs. Just 1 warranty. One website. 1 vendor.
I work for my University’s IT department and we, like most others, were also saying “holy shit!” to the news about Boot Camp. Today we went thru the very slow downloads (Apple server getting slammed perhaps?) and tested out Boot Camp. A few thoughts:
1) We installed Server 2003 instead of XP. Install was successful, but it wouldn’t install the drivers. Boot Camp does an OS check and will only(?) install on XP. So I think that for now, Vista Beta’s are out unless someone does a hack.
2) Once the software matures, I’m with Justin: No more Dulls, Alienwhere or HPiss in our school labs. Only Macs, Macs and more Macs. Infact, our school’s new slogan for attracting students could be:
“We have more Macs than you can shake a stick at!”
3) Steve Jobs should call up Bill Gates and scream, “Who’s your Daddy?!”
I think Leopard virtualization is going to look a lot like what’s come before. Namely, I think that the “expose layer” is a huge clue. Windows in new Macs will be treated as another layer for the expose/dashboard/frontrow family. Imagine the cool swoopy frontrow things you could do with that. No context switching. Everything stays in its box. BUT you can cut and paste between them and drag and drop documents. Done with Windows? Double click the apple button. OS X slides right back in and you can wipe your mind of the aesthetic torture you just endured. Think about the pitch Jobs made when showing off dashboard the first time (“You use the widgets you want and then, boom, they go away.”) used exactly the same way to explain OS X/Windows integration. It’s a really intuitive model when you think about it.
As for dual booting, I agreed its a productivity killer if you need to constantly switch back and forth all the time. However, if you work in a PC-centric industry like I do, I know that I can spend 8 – 10 hours straight in Windows (pity me) and then switch to OS X when I really want to enjoy computing.
John C. Randolph
Boot Camp isn’t a framework at all. It’s an application, that uses the diskutil program to resize partitions, and burns a windows drivers disk for you. It’s not related to virtualization in any way.
As for virtualization, it’s far more important than just letting people run Windows under Mac OS. The real benefit of virtualization is being able to run Mac OS itself inside of a virtual machine.
For me as a developer, I’d like to be able to run pre-release builds of OS X, as well as older versions of the OS within VMs, so that I don’t have to reboot for testing.
For end-users, the benefits are even bigger: Imagine working on your laptop, and when you get to your office, you connect to your desktop machine, and continue in literally the very same environment you were using on your laptop.
VMWare is already able to migrate a running VM across physical hosts without restarting it. People use this on servers as a load-management capability. What if logging out or turning your machine off was exactly the same as fast user-switching, in that when you log in again, EVERYTHING was where you left it? Same windows open, cursor blinking in the very same place where you were typing last? What if, when you buy a new Mac, you don’t just migrate your home directory, you copy across the same VM that you normally work in?
Virtualization is on the way, and it will be far more than we can realize today. I hope we get it by Leopard, but in any case I’m sure we’ll have it before MS’s next six-year development effort reaches the beta stage. 😉
-jcr
John C. Randolph
Boot Camp isn’t a framework at all. It’s an application, that uses the diskutil program to resize partitions, and burns a windows drivers disk for you. It’s not related to virtualization in any way.
As for virtualization, it’s far more important than just letting people run Windows under Mac OS. The real benefit of virtualization is being able to run Mac OS itself inside of a virtual machine.
For me as a developer, I’d like to be able to run pre-release builds of OS X, as well as older versions of the OS within VMs, so that I don’t have to reboot for testing.
For end-users, the benefits are even bigger: Imagine working on your laptop, and when you get to your office, you connect to your desktop machine, and continue in literally the very same environment you were using on your laptop.
VMWare is already able to migrate a running VM across physical hosts without restarting it. People use this on servers as a load-management capability. What if logging out or turning your machine off was exactly the same as fast user-switching, in that when you log in again, EVERYTHING was where you left it? Same windows open, cursor blinking in the very same place where you were typing last? What if, when you buy a new Mac, you don’t just migrate your home directory, you copy across the same VM that you normally work in?
Virtualization is on the way, and it will be far more than we can realize today. I hope we get it by Leopard, but in any case I’m sure we’ll have it before MS’s next six-year development effort reaches the beta stage. 😉
VMWare president Diane Greene has confirmed that they have a working Mac version running in their labs, but are not making any announcements at this time. I’m afraid all I have is this German news article.
If Microsoft also follow with a Virtual PC rewrite (or rather, a port of the x86 version), it’s going to get quite crowded in virtualisation-land.
You may want to take a look at the article just posted by Robert X. Cringely on what he views as the “end game” Apple sees for Boot Camp. You need to get through the full article, and not bail during the prelude. It has broader implications to the computing world than using Windows and OSX together…
“A Whole New Ball Game”
Blame Dell for Window Vista’s latest delay, but blame Microsoft for Apple’s Boot Camp. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/
Rahul Gonsalves
“Being able to play CS2 and the like when I need a break is going to be enjoyable.”
Am I the only one who first thought of Adobe? Sad commentary on my work to play ratio :-(. I have to get out more!
Here was my first reaction to Apple’s 
Yeah, but I bet “Boot Camp” is just a framework that will eventually allow virtualization in Leopard. Either via Apple, or Microsoft in the form of Virtual PC, Boot Camp’s technology seems destined to allow side-by-side use.
But who knows.
Which is pretty much what I’m hoping for!
Having migrated from Windows, I have an old PC to test websites on. Therefore, I don’t need Boot Camp myself (at least, not right now). However, from an investor’s point of view, Boot Camp seems to me to be a really good move.
It seems to me that people will migrate to Apple hardware first, and then install Windows. Naturally, they’ll mess around with Mac OS, and I believe that many people who actually use OS on a familiar computer will like it much more than Windows.
While Apple may not significantly increase software sales right off the bat, I think there will be an increase in hardware sales. I know plenty of people who would love to have Apple hardware, but don’t want to “learn” OS X give up their games.
The interesting part of BootCamp to me is the artwork. If you look at past pieces of software artwork, be it logos or boxes or posters or tv ads, the artwork of new products, especially un-rumormongered beta products, you see the shape of things to come. Think of the black and lickable supreme light table look of Aperture, and then take a peek in the full-screen editing of iPhoto. Look at the artwork of the box of iLife and the possibilities of the software come alive. You look at this Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come grey logo of windows, and I wonder at the daring statement of “yeah, we can hold this old thing for you… for now” and you have to wonder if, in the future, especially as they keep stating “BootCamp will be part of Leopard” that the system will start with Mac OS X regardless, and should you need windows, it will start, run and function at full speed, with fast-user switching doubling as fast-system-swapping. Because right now, Bootcamp intitializes before OS X, or so it appears.
But again, they keep saying it will be “built-in to Leopard” which is something else again.
I agree that dual-boot capability is still a pain in the butt. Personally, I’d be very happy with a Windows/OS X “fast user switching” setup, but I guess we’ll have to wait to see if that’s feasible.
Normally, I’d agree that dual-booting is less than ideal. But if you could run Mac apps alongside Windows apps, you’d have to have Mac OS and Windows both running concurrently along with all your software. Do you really want that kinda *cough*bloat*cough* overhead?
Brian: Well, that’s what I’m talking about — WINE reduces the overhead (in theory) and allows you to run Windows applications without Windows. Remember when I said that? That’s what I meant.
Nice write-up, Khoi.
My prediction – Apple will *never* offer virtualization, at least not in the near (1-2 year) future. There’s a lot of good reasons for this:
1. The modal shift is required. It forces the user to change their expectations – this looks like Windows, and acts like Windows, so if something blows up, it’s Window’s fault and not the Mac. Being able to just double-click on an exe doesn’t really provide that shift (even if the UI inside of the window suddenly looks like pants).
2. While I don’t think dual-booting has any real potential of killing off native application development for Mac OS X (which seems to be one of the more common paranoid reactions to Boot Camp that I’ve seen), virtualization most definitely is. If a developer knows for certain that every Mac that runs Leopard (or whatever) supports virtualization out of the box, there’s less incentive to spend the development time and money to build a true, native version port of a Windows-only application.
Not all companies would follow this route, but enough would that I think it would become a serious issue for OS X in the long term.
3. Apple has a long and storied history of plucking the low-hanging fruit and leaving the more complex implementations to 3rd party developers (cf. Safari RSS, the Finder, etc.). If some other company rolls out virtualization, not only does it save Apple the effort of developing it themselves, it also alleviates both of the above issues by virtue of not being an Apple product.
I’m not saying that being able to launch Windows IE 6 to quickly test a site and then quit out of it wouldn’t be dandy, but I highly doubt Apple would go much further than what they’re already providing with Boot Camp.
I’m no developer but it seems to me that because an app (from either platform) is so very dependent upon the the operating system itself and not written in something that is inherently cross-platform (like Java), you would need a Hybrid OS that is built from the ground up to support both windows and mac APIs or frameworks.
And you can be darn sure I’m not tainting my OS with windows.
I’m in agreement with Thomas and Khoi.
The real game changer would be “dual run” NOT “dual boot.
As Khoi has pointed out, it’s just too much overhead.
Neil – valid points, but as Will Shipley has pointed out, several developers continue to make Apple software for simple reasons:
– Mac users USE their computers, not tolerate them
– Mac users pay for software
– Mac users like having the latest and greatest, so they upgrade and pay for upgrades
Also, at an OS level, Mac apps can have features that Windows apps simply can’t because of the underpinnings of the two separate systems.
But it is interesting to think about whether the big guns – Adobe and Microsoft – would continue to make Mac versions if virtualisation was supported in Leopard.
The fastest way to run Adobe apps as of yesterday… boot into MS Windows… now that is a scary thought, just as Hrush raised he specter, I really wonder how Adobe looks at this?
Looks like there’s already a better solution than BootCamp. Parallels, a Russian competitor to VMWare, uses Intel’s Vanderpool to allow running guest operating systems “inside” your native OS. They’ve just released a public beta for Intel Macs, which supports Windows XP and Linux.
Now I really can’t wait until the Intel pro-Macs come out. I want to replace my PowerMac!
You heard it here. When Apple has migrated all of their major vendors to XCode, Cocoa for Windows will make a re-apperarance. This will enable the developers to truly offer the same software for both Macs and Windows – using Apple’s tools. Why wouldn’t a developer jump at a chance like that?
There is some talk of creating a series of APIs to allow OSX universal binaries to run on windows. Best of both worlds, on Apple’s terms.
I’m about to grab a MBP, for me being able to run XP has one sole advantage – games. Being able to play CS2 and the like when I need a break is going to be enjoyable.
Agreed. Without clipboard sharing, or rapid browser switching, it won’t be much of a productivity boost (for me).
I think the biggest impact of this won’t be for me though, it will for for the likes of Dell.
If Apple proceeds in this arena the same way they have in the past I would expect that ‘Boot Camp’ is just a prelude to what is ahead. Much in the same way that iPod Photo gave way to iPod (hey now they’re all color screen versions) which gave way to iPod (hey now I can watch video clips) which will probably give way to iPod AV (or hey now the screen is way bigger). It just seems to me that Apple has this thing for rolling out innovations in a measured way. They start with the small yet exciting innovation, even though they could have just gone to the bleeding edge right away. So my guess is that we will see virtualization in 10.5. They just wanted to get their feet wet and see how everyone was going to react. But hey if it’s the bleeding edge you’re looking for you might find it at http://www.parallels.com/en/mac
Psychologically I wonder what impact a Leopard w/Boot Camp Macintosh will have on some of those ipod-halo-effect potential switchers. It might just be the safety blanket they need to take the plunge and get a Mac. They can still boot into Windows and use old software etc.
Dare I say it’s similar to that initial move from OS 9/Classic to OS X. I could still boot Classic and run Adobe Dimensions if I needed to — until Illustrator CS for OS X incorporated that functionality. Eventually I never needed to run Classic…
I think this is an intermediary step; the end goal might be to make OSX portable to PC. (My rough outline here.) They’re not that far off now, and the ability to switch any computer from Windows to OSX would open Apple up to many more markets than ever before.
In a similar vein of WINE and DARWINE, you may want to take a look at Q; an open source and very mature processor emulator along the lines of VirtualPC. Really good for the web developer using OS X that needs to test stuff out on a Windows machine. In this case, it’s much more practical than rebooting and switching operating systems.
The response this announcement has received from people in the PC world is the most important aspect — without exception, every PC-using professional I know (whether designer, programmer, or systems admin) has said right away that now they will buy a Mac.
I think Apple is playing directly to that crowd here, and not to existing (and loyal) Mac users, and it’s a smart move. Plus, simply rebooting to play a few high-framerate FPS games in XP will be nice for Mac gamers 😉
I’d still like to see Microsoft release a version of VirtualPC that hooks directly into the Intel processor, skipping the whole emulation game, but I’m not holding my breath…
Here at the HS I work at we could buy 300 macs and let the user pick which os they want use. No more 120 dells, 110 macs. Just 1 warranty. One website. 1 vendor.
My friend Tim had the exact same reaction: Boot Camp — holy shit!
Has anyone any information about whether it is possible to run the Windows Vista Beta under BootCamp?
I have a shiny copy from MIX06 and would prefer to use Vista than be lumbered with the lumbering XP.
I work for my University’s IT department and we, like most others, were also saying “holy shit!” to the news about Boot Camp. Today we went thru the very slow downloads (Apple server getting slammed perhaps?) and tested out Boot Camp. A few thoughts:
1) We installed Server 2003 instead of XP. Install was successful, but it wouldn’t install the drivers. Boot Camp does an OS check and will only(?) install on XP. So I think that for now, Vista Beta’s are out unless someone does a hack.
2) Once the software matures, I’m with Justin: No more Dulls, Alienwhere or HPiss in our school labs. Only Macs, Macs and more Macs. Infact, our school’s new slogan for attracting students could be:
“We have more Macs than you can shake a stick at!”
3) Steve Jobs should call up Bill Gates and scream, “Who’s your Daddy?!”
I think Leopard virtualization is going to look a lot like what’s come before. Namely, I think that the “expose layer” is a huge clue. Windows in new Macs will be treated as another layer for the expose/dashboard/frontrow family. Imagine the cool swoopy frontrow things you could do with that. No context switching. Everything stays in its box. BUT you can cut and paste between them and drag and drop documents. Done with Windows? Double click the apple button. OS X slides right back in and you can wipe your mind of the aesthetic torture you just endured. Think about the pitch Jobs made when showing off dashboard the first time (“You use the widgets you want and then, boom, they go away.”) used exactly the same way to explain OS X/Windows integration. It’s a really intuitive model when you think about it.
Give it time, virtualization will happen.
As for dual booting, I agreed its a productivity killer if you need to constantly switch back and forth all the time. However, if you work in a PC-centric industry like I do, I know that I can spend 8 – 10 hours straight in Windows (pity me) and then switch to OS X when I really want to enjoy computing.
Boot Camp isn’t a framework at all. It’s an application, that uses the diskutil program to resize partitions, and burns a windows drivers disk for you. It’s not related to virtualization in any way.
As for virtualization, it’s far more important than just letting people run Windows under Mac OS. The real benefit of virtualization is being able to run Mac OS itself inside of a virtual machine.
For me as a developer, I’d like to be able to run pre-release builds of OS X, as well as older versions of the OS within VMs, so that I don’t have to reboot for testing.
For end-users, the benefits are even bigger: Imagine working on your laptop, and when you get to your office, you connect to your desktop machine, and continue in literally the very same environment you were using on your laptop.
VMWare is already able to migrate a running VM across physical hosts without restarting it. People use this on servers as a load-management capability. What if logging out or turning your machine off was exactly the same as fast user-switching, in that when you log in again, EVERYTHING was where you left it? Same windows open, cursor blinking in the very same place where you were typing last? What if, when you buy a new Mac, you don’t just migrate your home directory, you copy across the same VM that you normally work in?
Virtualization is on the way, and it will be far more than we can realize today. I hope we get it by Leopard, but in any case I’m sure we’ll have it before MS’s next six-year development effort reaches the beta stage. 😉
-jcr
Boot Camp isn’t a framework at all. It’s an application, that uses the diskutil program to resize partitions, and burns a windows drivers disk for you. It’s not related to virtualization in any way.
As for virtualization, it’s far more important than just letting people run Windows under Mac OS. The real benefit of virtualization is being able to run Mac OS itself inside of a virtual machine.
For me as a developer, I’d like to be able to run pre-release builds of OS X, as well as older versions of the OS within VMs, so that I don’t have to reboot for testing.
For end-users, the benefits are even bigger: Imagine working on your laptop, and when you get to your office, you connect to your desktop machine, and continue in literally the very same environment you were using on your laptop.
VMWare is already able to migrate a running VM across physical hosts without restarting it. People use this on servers as a load-management capability. What if logging out or turning your machine off was exactly the same as fast user-switching, in that when you log in again, EVERYTHING was where you left it? Same windows open, cursor blinking in the very same place where you were typing last? What if, when you buy a new Mac, you don’t just migrate your home directory, you copy across the same VM that you normally work in?
Virtualization is on the way, and it will be far more than we can realize today. I hope we get it by Leopard, but in any case I’m sure we’ll have it before MS’s next six-year development effort reaches the beta stage. 😉
-jcr
VMWare president Diane Greene has confirmed that they have a working Mac version running in their labs, but are not making any announcements at this time. I’m afraid all I have is this German news article.
If Microsoft also follow with a Virtual PC rewrite (or rather, a port of the x86 version), it’s going to get quite crowded in virtualisation-land.
Amar
You may want to take a look at the article just posted by Robert X. Cringely on what he views as the “end game” Apple sees for Boot Camp. You need to get through the full article, and not bail during the prelude. It has broader implications to the computing world than using Windows and OSX together…
“A Whole New Ball Game”
Blame Dell for Window Vista’s latest delay, but blame Microsoft for Apple’s Boot Camp.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/
“Being able to play CS2 and the like when I need a break is going to be enjoyable.”
Am I the only one who first thought of Adobe? Sad commentary on my work to play ratio :-(. I have to get out more!